by N. E. Bode
“Who?”
“The rooster’s name is Mr. Harton. Or it was Mr. Harton before he gave up selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door to become a rooster. And, come morning, he’s going to start to crow. But I’ve got a hunch, I’ve got a feeling, that you’ll be able to cure him.”
“Do you think so?”
“I tried to wink at you while I was Mrs. Lilliopole. I was always trying to get you to look at me, but you never would. But then finally I did wink at you, Fern. Remember? When you were going upstairs at the Drudgers? And you winked back. Probably didn’t think you were going to wink, but you did. And if an Anybody winks at another Anybody, even an Anybody who isn’t really an Anybody yet, they’ve got to wink back. It’s one of the rules from the book. And you winked, Fern. Naturally. You winked!”
3
DEHYPNOTIZING MR. HARTON
OH, MY OLD WRITING TEACHER, SOMETIMES I still think of him, like now, right here at Part 2, Chapter Three, “Dehypnotizing Mr. Harton.” If he could see me now, typing feverishly, he would have to admit that I do look like a writer and act like one. I may even smell like a writer, but I’m not sure what writers smell like—ink, erasers, books? He would be astonished, I tell you, because he never had faith in me. Not one ounce! Some teachers just don’t know the gem sitting right in front of them. Like you, for example, you’re obviously a gem and you probably have one old stinker of a teacher who doesn’t have any idea. Well, you’ll show that teacher one day, you will, you will! Like I am at this very moment in Part 2, Chapter Three. Oh, and after this there’s more, more, more! In fact, I will promise right here, right now, some very freakish, bizarre behavior and outlandish surprises. Read on!
Before inviting Mr. Harton in, the Bone vacuumed. Mr. Harton had left his demonstration kit behind, and the Bone wanted to use the sample vacuum before he’d have to give it back. He didn’t own a vacuum cleaner, and maybe you recall that the Bone’s apartment was still very furry from the dog that’d left him for the wider, more appreciative audiences of circus life. Fern watched the Bone’s harried vacuuming job. He started out on the orange sofa—Fern had never seen anyone vacuum furniture before. A flurry of motion, he was nothing like Mrs. Drudger, who vacuumed in diagonal rows. The Bone vacuumed the same way he must have mowed the front yard, in ragged, starlike clusters. He’d probably borrowed the mower, too, Fern thought (and she was right). He shouted the story of Mr. Harton over the small, thrumming vacuum motor, and Fern listened intently, trying to dodge the vacuum’s zipping nose.
“MR. HARTON WAS A TERRIBLE SALESMAN, FERN. HE COULDN’T SELL FAT MICE TO CATS. HE SLOUCHED. HE WAS SHIFTY-EYED. HE MUMBLED HIS DELIVERY. HE LACKED CONFIDENCE, MOST OF ALL. WITH CONFIDENCE, YOU CAN SELL ANYTHING. REMEMBER THAT, FERN. THAT’S IMPORTANT. I LET HIM IN BECAUSE HE WAS SO PATHETIC. I TOLD HIM THAT I COULD HELP HIM WITH HIS PITCH. I COULD GET HIM THE COCKINESS HE NEEDED TO BE TOP-NOTCH. SO I HYPNOTIZED HIM. HE LEFT HERE SO FULL OF HIMSELF HE DIDN’T WANT TO SELL VACUUM CLEANERS ANYMORE. HE SAID HE WAS GOING TO SELL CONDOS OR SOMETHING. HE HAD A BROTHER WHO’D MADE A FORTUNE IN CONDOS. SO HE LEFT.”
“BUT HE’S BACK. WHAT HAPPENED?”
The Bone had strayed too far from the outlet. The plug popped from the wall. The vacuum cleaner’s motor, wheezy from the intake of so much fur, wound down, its stiff lung deflated. “It’s the same thing that always goes wrong these days. I’m not exactly sure how it happens. But they seem to…they seem so overcome with their new personalities that they turn into some animal version of the trait I’ve given them. Once a stupid man turned into an owl. And a woman who wanted to have children turned into a rabbit. It doesn’t always make perfect sense. Once an old man wanted to be young and he turned into a baby kangaroo.” This made Fern nervous. She didn’t want to be turned into something ridiculous, and she hoped that the Bone couldn’t do it accidentally. She worried about him now, the way you’d worry about someone wandering around with a lit match who could bump into the curtains, setting the whole place on fire. “No one ever showed up at the front door to complain when your mother and I were together. No one ever showed up trying to catch flies with their tongue.” The Bone scratched his chin with his knuckles. “The process has developed some kinks.”
Fern fiddled with the key on her necklace. She thought of her diary with her mother’s photograph in it. She was still not used to the idea that she had another mother, much less one she would never get to see. “Do they have to live like that for the rest of their lives?”
“Oh, no, it wears off in a couple of months or so.”
“Months!”
“But you’ll be able to set Mr. Harton straight right away. I know it.”
Fern was doubtful. “I will? But I have no idea what to do.” She wanted to explain to the Bone that she wasn’t very good at doing things in general. Maybe there had been some kind of mistake. I mean, so much of what the Bone had said fit in with the strange aspects of Fern’s life, explaining some of the unexplainable, but this? Fern was sure she was going to disappoint the Bone, and she didn’t want to. He had his hopes pinned on her.
“Don’t worry. I’ll walk you through it. It helps that you have the gift handed down to you. I don’t want you to be just a sideshow act. I want you to be someone who really can help people one day. But there’s that other ingredient. The one I had once but don’t now.” He gazed off for a moment, his eyes catching on the photograph his wife had taken of him and the Miser laughing.
In the Bone’s defense (and I do defend the Bone, because although he’s kind of a squirrelly guy and imperfect, he is good, deep down), hypnosis is an imprecise science. Actually, when you think of chemistry with its H this and its O that, and when you think of biology with its test tubes and beakers and its dissected worms, well, hypnosis isn’t a science at all. And it isn’t really an art, either, in light of the Mona Lisa and ice sculpting and baton twirling. And it isn’t a sport, because you don’t get points or win those statues of miniature golfers or divers glued to marble. So I’m not sure what to call it, but really it’s murky territory. It’s mysterious, yes, that’s it. It’s a mystery.
The Bone set to work. He opened the apartment door and then the main door to the house. He walked out into the yard behind Mr. Harton and flushed him inside by clapping and waving his arms. Mr. Harton was all high-step and flap. He stood in the middle of the room, his head bobbing now and then. He stared at Fern and then started to preen. He used his nose like a beak, picking at his shoulders. The Bone rolled the vacuum cleaner over to Mr. Harton, but Mr. Harton didn’t even look at it. The Bone rolled it back and forth right in front of him, but again Mr. Harton ignored it.
“That’s a bad sign,” said the Bone. “He’s in deep.”
With a little force, the Bone sat Mr. Harton down in a chair next to Fern at the table where she’d eaten. Her orange peel sat in the empty soup bowl with the tough heart of the onion and its crisp brown skin.
“Okay,” said the Bone, “try to get him to look at you. Try to catch and hold his stare.”
Fern stared at Mr. Harton. He had pale blue eyes that looked a little teary. They darted around the room, falling occasionally on Fern’s eyes, but not staying put. Fern moved her face to block his view. She was certain that she wouldn’t be able to do it. She was bound to let the Bone down, and what then? Well, terrible things could happen. Mainly, the world could come to an end. But, Fern reminded herself, she wasn’t a Drudger who fibbed because of an overactive dysfunction. Her real mother never would have called her a fibber. Her real mother would have understood. Fern caught Mr. Harton’s eyes, then lost them, then caught them again. Fern had to try to do this. She had to. She kept at it and, eventually, he was staring at her out of one eye, his head turned away, as if he were a bird with an eye on the side of his head. Yes, she had him!
The Bone slipped Fern a pocket watch on a gold chain. The pocket watch didn’t work, of course. The Bone didn’t keep track of time, as you all know by now. But the watch was shiny and, on its long chain, it swung nicely, which
were the qualities the Bone looked for in a pocket watch.
“Hold it up by the chain. Make it sway back and forth and back and forth. That’s right. You’ve got it.”
Fern was making the watch sway like a clock’s ticktock, and Mr. Harton’s watery eyes were hooked on it. Fern was very proud. She smiled at the Bone, but he shook his head. “Not done yet,” he said. “More to it than that. Now don’t look at the watch yourself, Fern. Don’t look at it.” He began to whisper into Mr. Harton’s ear, “You are getting sleepy. Very sleepy.” He kept on with this until the man’s eyes blinked again and again, more slowly, until they shut and didn’t open.
Fern let the watch drop to her lap.
The Bone handed her a bell, small and brass with a black wooden handle. Then he put his hands on Mr. Harton’s shoulders. He said to Fern, “Say these words: ‘You are not a rooster. You are a man. Return. Return. Return.’ And ring this bell softly, softly each time you start to say it again. Try that.”
Fern rang it once, then started to say the words. “You are not a rooster. You are a man….” And the Bone started to hum, a deep low note. Fern felt something electric, a snappy static all around them. Each time the Bone took a breath to hum again it was like a car trying to start up. There was a vroom vroom of energy, something buzzing and zapping. But the engine never really revved up. She could feel the electricity rev and stall, rev and stall. But she kept on repeating it, “Return, return, return.” She was holding the bell in front of Mr. Harton’s face, ringing it softly. Her arms were tired. The Bone’s hum was breaking up.
Finally he said, “Okay, ring it loud now. Ring it like crazy.”
She did, and Mr. Harton startled awake with a gasp, like someone who’d been trapped underwater coming up for air.
“Stand up,” the Bone told him. He did, shakily. He glanced at the vacuum, and it was clear that he recognized it.
“Good. Good,” the Bone urged. “Walk to it.”
Mr. Harton looked at Fern and the Bone. He looked longingly at the vacuum cleaner.
“What is it?” the Bone asked. “Do you want to tell us something?”
Mr. Harton nodded and then smiled broadly. He pitched back his head and let out a loud clear yodel, a clear timeless cry of “Cockadoodledoo!” Then he put his head to his chest. His face crumpled. His eyes spilled two tears. Fern knew there had been something, some kind of magic charge, and although it wasn’t enough, she knew she’d felt it and it was undeniable. She wondered if spies were listening to all of this, if the Miser would hear about this sad failure.
The Bone sighed, and Mr. Harton half-heartedly stepped to the vacuum cleaner, grabbed its handle, and rolled it toward the door. The Bone opened the first door for him, then the second. Mr. Harton, still a rooster man, bobbed his head, but Fern couldn’t tell if it was an acknowledgment or simply a rooster like flinch. Fern and the Bone followed him outside and watched him strut down the street with his vacuum cleaner bumping and rolling behind him.
4
SPIES
THAT NIGHT, THE BONE THREW SHEETS ON A ROW of saggy beanbag chairs—a bed for himself—and sheets on the orange, now less furry, sofa for Fern. They lay down across the room from each other in the dark. Except for the occasional roar of a passing train, the apartment was quiet. There was a little slice of moonlight coming in through a crack in the curtains. Fern was writing in her diary as silently as she could. She had a lot to catch up on. She wrote about Milton Beige, Howard, the Bone, and Mary Curtain—the real Mary Curtain in her kitchen somewhere—and Marty, the fake Mary Curtain. She wrote about the rooster man and the raw onion and the orange and the Miser and her mother, most of all her mother. She pulled the picture out, gazed at it, and then wrote:
When I look at the picture of her, I mean really look, really stare right into her eyes, I feel like I know her. Sometimes I feel like we are thinking the same thing or feeling the same thing, like our hearts miss each other.
The Bone started to hum a sad love song, and then he sang a few of the words, “Sweet, sweet, my sweet darling angel, where have you gone, where have you gone?”
The song made Fern want to cry. She put the picture back into the diary and closed it. She stared up at the ceiling, and a lump rose in her throat. When she coughed, hoping to clear it, the Bone stopped singing. He coughed too, as if embarrassed he’d been caught. Fern thought that maybe he’d thought she was asleep.
“Soon the Bartons will start clog dancing upstairs,” the Bone said.
“At least the rooster won’t wake us up,” Fern said.
“True.”
The Bone let out an exhausted sigh. He said, “Your mother knew she wasn’t going to make it. She just knew. She told me over the jail phone, looking at me through the Plexiglas. I told her she was silly. She started giving me information about the book, where she’d leave it for me, a special spot, but I hushed her up. I said I didn’t want to hear about it. She gave up talking about it. She gave up pretty easily, in fact. She didn’t want to upset me. Or, sometimes I think, maybe…”
“What?” Fern asked, propping herself up on her elbows.
“Maybe she was hatching a bigger plan. Your mother was tricky. She always had a way of getting what she wanted.”
“What did she want when she was alive?” Fern asked, now sitting up and staring at the Bone through the weak light.
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Really,” Fern said, “tell me.”
The Bone thought out loud, “What did she want? What did she really want? She wanted for me and the Miser to be friends again. And I guess she’d have loved it if I’d gotten along with her mother….”
Fern hadn’t thought about this before. She had a grandmother. This took her by surprise. She wanted to meet her grandmother now. She had to!
The Bone went on, “But her mother is a loon, I tell you. C-R-A-Z-Y. She runs a boarding house but truly lives in a world of books. And I mean that very seriously. I never got along with the old woman….”
Fern stopped listening now. She was starting to understand something—her mother was a plotter. She had a plan. She was smart. She wanted the Bone and the Miser to be friends again. Fern guessed that her mother felt responsible for the two cutting ties, for coming between them, maybe. And she wanted the Bone to become close to her mother. Well, of course, she loved these two people.
Now that Fern knew what her mother wanted, she had to think of how her mother would use the book to get it. Her mother knew the future—that she was going to die—but how far into the future could she see? Did her mother know that one day Fern would be here trying to piece it all together? Fern was on her feet now, pacing. It helped her think.
“What is it?” the Bone asked.
Fern didn’t answer because she hadn’t really heard him. She was thinking of her mother’s heart and her own, her mother’s mind and her own. How would Fern’s mother use the book to bring all of these people together—the Miser, the Bone, Fern’s grandmother, and maybe even Fern herself? Wasn’t she part of the puzzle? Did this plan of her mother’s rely on Fern? Fern paced some more. One thought turned to the next and the next and finally she knew where the book would turn up. There was only one logical spot. The one place that Fern was most drawn to, the one place where they would all wind up. “Well, that’s it then,” Fern said.
“That’s what?” the Bone asked.
“The book is at her mother’s house!” Fern said loudly.
“What? You’re joking.”
“No.” And now she jogged over to the windows and yelled it. “The book is at Eliza’s mother’s house!” She yelled it again, just because she liked being allowed to yell. “THE BOOK IS AT ELIZA’S MOTHER’S HOUSE!!”
She pulled the curtain back quickly and there, on the other side of the window, was a tiny pale face with a sharp nose. It was a small, little, tiny man with a cup held to the window, pressed to his ear. The ear was big compared to the man’s small head. Too big. He stared at Fern for a split se
cond and then took off, running down the train tracks to a red van with gold lettering, too far away to read, a few other small men straggling after him.
“Spies!” Fern said. “And they heard it all!” She was triumphant.
She let the curtain drop and turned to the Bone, who was now standing up, his spine straight, his expression electrified. “Why did you let them hear it? Why didn’t you scare them off first?”
“Simple,” Fern said. “How could you become friends with the Miser again if he doesn’t know the book is at her mother’s? And how could you become close to my grandmother if the book isn’t there? And how would I eventually know my grandmother at all if it isn’t there? We’ve all got to be there together.”
You see, Fern is quite smart. She isn’t good at math camp, but she’s bright, quick-witted. She’d never known that she was right before. She’d never had that strong conviction. But now she did, and she felt something else that was new: stubbornness. Now that Fern knew she was right, there was no changing her mind. Stubbornness is very bad in someone who has only bad ideas, but it’s very good in someone who has good ideas. Luckily Fern is the smart kind of stubborn. And it can’t be denied that Fern liked this plan especially because it would bring her to her grandmother, and Fern hadn’t given up on the idea of finding a place that felt like home. Maybe she would find it there, Fern thought, in the house where her mother had grown up with the woman who’d raised her.
The Bone paced back and forth. “No, no. Eliza wouldn’t leave the book with her mother. She wouldn’t do that to me. Her mother can’t stand me! And now the Miser, too! It’s all wrong. All very, very wrong. I won’t go. I won’t do it!”
But Fern knew she was right. She knew she was very, very right. She looked at the Bone with her big eyes and she smiled. He sagged. And just then, from above, an accordion started up—happy, bouncy music—and the clogs set in like a hailstorm—hailstones the size of clogs. The Bone stared up at the ceiling then back at Fern, and Fern knew that the Bone knew the only other option was to stay where they were. She knew she’d won.
